GEN1234 Because the rabbis usually equated wisdom with knowledge of traditional Jewish law, a field all but closed to women, they tended to overlook the frequent, positive connections between wisdom and women found in the Bible.   For there we find the vivid portraits of savvy females endowed with both practical street smarts and complex intelligence, able to handle whatever comes their way. Rebecca knows that Jacob, not Esau, deserves Isaac’s blessings and masterminds the plot to achieve that result [this and following verses]. Yael entices the Canaanite general Sisera into her tent and kills him Judges 4:17 – 22. Moses’ sister Miriam looks after her infant brother as he floats in the Nile River bulrushes and suggests to Pharaoh’s daughter that she hire his real mother to nurse him Exodus 2:4,7. But the rabbis were not so sexist that they never associated wisdom with women. One midrash tells us that “Miriam took wisdom” as her inheritance and passed it on her descendent, Bezalel Exodus Rabbah 48:4 Another relates how Miriam found fresh water to drink after the people crossed the sea to freedom Taanit 9a. However, the ultimate connection between understanding and femininity is supplied by the Book of Proverbs, which personifies wisdom as a woman: “Wisdom cries aloud in the streets, raises her voice in the squares… at the gates she speaks out” 1:20 – 21   “Say to wisdom ‘you are my sister,’ and call understanding a kinswoman” 7:4 “She is more precious than rubies, all your goods do not equal her work. Length of days is in her right hand, riches and honor in her left-hand. Her ways are ways a pleasantness and all her paths are peace. She is a tree of life to them that grasp her, and all who hold onto her are happy” 3:15 – 18. Proverbs does not only depict woman as an allegorical figure of wisdom; it also praises the living human being in “The Woman of Valor” poem that closes the book. Feminist scholars have faulted some of the poem’s verses because they portray the archetypal female as glorying in self-sacrifice: “She rises while it is still night, and supplies provisions for household… And never eats from the bread of idleness” 31:15, 27   We prefer to see her as an early exemplar of female entrepreneurship, for the next text also says: “She sets her mind on an estate and acquires it … She girds herself with strength and performs her tasks with vigor; she sees that her business thrives” 31:16 – 18. Some of these early themes have been adapted in more modern times. For example, the 18th-century Polish poet Isaac Halevi Satanov writes: “Because God loved wisdom, He adopted her as His daughter and lovingly brought her up. Before God made heaven and earth, she was God’s delight” Mishle Asaf [The proverbs of Asaf].   A twentieth-century female incarnation of wisdom may well be the poet and playwright Gertrude Stein, whose wise dying words were, “What is the question?”   Of course, of all women honored by the tradition, we must not fail to mention our first and most influential teacher—our own mother. As our first and most constant connection with life, our mother bequeaths us her insight and wisdom, which serve as the foundation of our knowledge for all the years to come. Our later teachers are either her surrogates or her colleagues.   BOROJMV 18-9